Supported hardware
If your gear has an INDI driver, ARIS runs it.
ARIS supports any device with an INDI driver, and Windows-connected equipment through a NINA rig — controlled from iPhone, iPad, Android, or any browser. This page lists the hardware we test with; if yours isn’t here, it may still work.
Three kinds of rig
INDI rig
A Raspberry Pi 5, an NVIDIA Jetson, or any 64-bit Debian-based Linux machine running the ARIS backend with INDI drivers — the standard setup. One installer sets up the backend, INDI drivers, PHD2, plate solving, and auto-start. Raspberry Pi 5 recommended; Pi 4 works but slower.
Rig install guideNINA rig
A Windows imaging PC running NINA 3.x with the ARIS plug-in. NINA stays your capture engine; ARIS adds planning, monitoring, and control from phone, tablet, or browser. Windows-only ASCOM gear joins the fleet through a NINA rig. NINA rigs run a subset of ARIS features today.
NINA integrationSmart telescope
Early support is rolling out, starting with the ZWO Seestar line, with more smart scopes coming. A smart telescope joins the fleet as one more rig on the dashboard.
Current statusPick your rig computer
The rig computer lives with the telescope and runs the whole night. Four ways to build one — pick by budget and how much you want running on the rig itself.
Raspberry Pi 5
The standard build. One installer sets up the backend, INDI drivers, PHD2, plate solving, and auto-start — Pi 4 works too, just slower. GUPPI answers the core questions here — no local model needed.
NVIDIA Jetson (Orin family)
The GPU tier. The same backend runs on Ubuntu-based JetPack, with GUPPI’s full local model and headroom for heavy processing nights.
Windows mini PC + NINA
Keep your NINA workflow. The ARIS plug-in for NINA 3.x makes the PC a first-class rig in the fleet — a subset of ARIS features today, growing.
Smart telescopes
No rig computer at all. A ZWO Seestar joins the fleet as its own rig — early access, capability expanding.
Brands ARIS works across
Support comes by ecosystem, not by compatibility list: ARIS speaks INDI, so if the driver exists, the device works — and the standard INDI distribution covers the brands below out of the box. Cameras expose every setting the driver reports — exposure, gain, offset, binning, cooling, USB bandwidth, readout modes; mounts get GoTo, tracking rates, parking, and automated meridian flips with pause-before-flip and post-flip re-centering.
Cameras
Mounts
Focusers, wheels & the rest of the train
Flat panels & covers
Flat panels aren’t an afterthought here — they’re one of the most requested integrations in the hobby and a first-class ARIS device: the flat wizard calibrates brightness and exposure per filter, sequences shoot flats on your schedule, and capture is cover-aware so a closed panel never silently ruins a run.
The rest of the imaging train
ARIS manages eight device types across your rig. Beyond the camera and mount:
Focuser
Absolute and relative moves, temperature compensation, and backlash compensation.
Filter wheel
Name and color every slot, switch automatically in sequences, and carry per-filter focus offsets so a filter change doesn’t cost a focus run.
Rotator
Plate-solve-driven position angles, one-tap calibration, and cable-wrap protection with your configured rotation limits.
Guider
ARIS runs PHD2 — the industry-standard guiding engine — on the rig: profiles, live guide graphs, settling, and aggressiveness tuning.
Cover / flat panel
The flat wizard finds the right brightness and exposure per filter and saves the results to your equipment profile.
Power box
Switch DC ports individually, set dew-heater power per channel, and control USB power groups.
All-sky cameras
One fisheye camera pointed at the sky gives ARIS ground truth: live cloud detection painted on the planning chart, a measured clear-or-overcast sky state, calibrated sky-quality (SQM) readings, and smart masking that learns your site — trees, buildings, the Moon, and passing aircraft don’t read as clouds. The camera calibrates itself against the stars — a single clear night frame solves its full geometry to about a quarter degree — so pointing markers and cloud positions land where they should. Three ways to bring one, depending on where you’re starting:
Plug into your existing setup
Available now
Already capturing all-sky frames? Install the ARIS companion on the machine that runs your camera. It analyzes the frames your current software already produces and publishes sky intelligence to your rigs — discovery is zero-config, and your keograms and time-lapses keep working untouched.
Camera on the rig computer
Rolling out
Starting fresh? Plug a USB astronomy camera with a fisheye lens into your rig computer and ARIS drives it directly — no separate capture stack to install or maintain.
SkyNode
Rolling out
A dedicated sky node: a Raspberry Pi with a USB astronomy camera on it — power it anywhere with a clear view of the sky and it serves every rig on your network. Runs the full raw pipeline with night and day exposure regimes and a live focus mode for aiming. A purpose-built $25 SkyNode board is in development.
The reference camera is a ZWO ASI676MC class raw-sensor USB astronomy camera behind a fisheye lens — that combination delivers the full measurement set: cloud detection, sky state, and SQM. Many owners repurpose a spare guide-class camera with a fisheye lens instead. Consumer Wi-Fi and security cameras aren’t supported for sky measurements — their IR filters, noise reduction, and compression mean they can’t deliver honest photometry.
No enclosure required for pack-in-nightly setups: a bare camera on a small stand works, and a ~$15 USB dew ring keeps the lens clear on wet nights. Permanent installations keep their weatherproof housings.
All-sky features run on INDI rigs today — not yet available on NINA rigs.
SkyNode setup guideSmart telescopes
Support for the ZWO Seestar is rolling out now in early access: a Seestar joins your ARIS fleet like any other rig — discovered on your network, monitored from the same dashboard, its images handled alongside the output of your INDI and NINA rigs. Early access means exactly that — capability is expanding week over week. More smart telescopes are planned.
Smart telescope statusSprinkler controllers
A backyard rig shares the yard with the irrigation. Pair a supported controller — starting with Rachio — and ARIS holds the watering schedules you choose in standby while any rig is powered on, then lets them resume on their own once the rig shuts down. Pause a whole controller, or only the rig-area schedules while the rest of the yard waters normally. Built fail-safe: if anything breaks mid-night, it breaks toward keeping the water off.
Set up sprinkler standbySoftware ARIS works with
- INDI — the open driver ecosystem ARIS is built on. No proprietary black box, no hardware lock-in.
- PHD2 — runs on the rig as the guiding engine; ARIS provides the full guide interface on top of it.
- NINA — the ARIS plug-in makes a Windows imaging PC a first-class rig, and ARIS sequences push to NINA’s Advanced Sequencer.
- Telescopius — import saved observing lists (CSV), Autostar tours (.mtf), and mosaic plans with per-pane position angles.
The app side
The ARIS app runs on iPhone and iPad (iOS 15+), Android (7.0+), macOS (a native, notarized Mac app), and the web — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge, on phones, tablets, and desktops. No hardware yet? A complete practice observatory is built in — beta invites include the full rig simulator, so you learn every screen before connecting real equipment.
There’s an Apple Watch app too (watchOS 10+): every rig as a Mission Tile — sequence progress, guiding, and Guardian state at a glance — with one-tap pause and resume, a confirm-gated stop, and a watch-face complication that carries progress and finish time.
The full matrix — platform minimums, rig computer requirements, and known limitations — lives in the docs.